Assessment come Curriculum Map

Today in the planning day come workshop thingie we talked through, about, around, down, in, out, and up assessment and learning. This is what has come out in the wash:

Starting backwards. Semester two is straightforward, some hurdle tasks in the lab would be useful to keep students on track, measure progress and milestones, and provide support, scaffolding, but the key outcome of all subjects in semester two is the honours research outcome which will be examined. This provides all the assessment tasks and outcomes for the semester.

The assessment tasks for semester one have been planned from the point of view of aligning them towards maximising the research done in honours, and the quality of the honours research outcomes (the theses and projects undertaken). Each of the assessable tasks are designed to be formative in terms of the final honours outcome, with one caveat at this point being the media futures subject which is a theoretical island within the program.

Semester one has four subjects, the research practice subject has no timetabled teaching and is an allocation of time (measured by credit points) for students to be doing the research work that honours requires. As mentioned, the media futures subject will have two essays as outcomes, but these are not part of the formative model for the rest of the assessment at this point.

The research strategies subject will see students develop a research problem/statement in the early weeks. This will be a hurdle task, it will not be assessed, but must be completed. It will change during the course of the semester and the year, but is important to develop a trajectory to everything else that is going on. Here they will also learn some basic project management, and by the end of the semester will have also identified/signed on with a supervisor. The project management, supervision documentation and a project plan (timeline) for semester two will form a hurdle portfolio task. The two assessable tasks for the research strategies subject will be a 2000 word written piece due mid semester. This will be a preliminary investigation of what the key methods are for the individual research problem, who are the key figures in the field, what do they say, and how do you actually do/use these methods (what are they exactly?). This is assessed, and based on the feedback you get will form the basis for a larger, expanded writing task (4000 words) that writes out in much more complexity and detail your method/s, the key figures, theories and ideas, what they are, and how they are used (and perhaps why). This can also be used as the basis for the opening chapter of the thesis or the exegesis.

The first semester research lab is orientated around learning a lot about the theme or topic of the lab. A suggested model for the content is to use a tripartite structure that spends a third defining ‘boundaries, edges and tipping points’. What are the definitional terms and debates, what are the edges and boundaries of the problem (where does it begin, when does it become something else) and at what point, or where ‘in between’ do things change? A third examining why this topic actually matters (what are its ethical implications, what relation does this have to other things?), and a final third investigating how the theme intersects with the students’ individual discipline, field or practice.

For example, in non fiction the first third might think about where does non fiction as a concept have purchase (writing, film making, video, art, journalism, but what about in design? advertising? gaming?), and within these about what point or moment does nonfiction become fiction or whatever the oppositional other is to nonfiction? The second third examining the import of non fiction in terms of an ethics of practice (who gets to speak? why? how?), why does it even matter to distinguish things that make nonfiction truth claims from fictional truth claims, how non fiction can non fiction be? And a final third thinking about these questions in the context of my own discipline and field – which is where I can bring in my research problem and concerns to provide a lens to focus this theme.

For assessment we want to assess what has been learnt about the theme, but in a manner that is relevant to the disciplinary mix and the larger research projects being undertaken. We also want the emphasis and effort here being on doing a lot of reading, watching, listening, trying to be a sponge with the assessment not detracting from the effort to learn as much as you can. The first task will be a highly constrained presentation (let’s say 3 minutes long) where you must express a point of view about the lab theme from the point of view of your research problem/field/discipline/practice. You are to argue for your opinion (but not just opinion since it should be informed by your emerging understanding of the topic area) using evidence from what you have learnt. This will happen mid semester. The presentations will be critiqued by the lab, and assessed. The second task will be to develop this point of view further, to turn it into a substantial argument that again takes a position in relation to the lab topic and your research problem/practice/discipline/field. This work can take any form that is relevant to your practice/discipline but if it is not an essay but is some other sort of artefact then it must have a written accompaniment.

Things to consider. Semester two labs, what should a lab leave behind? why? how?

The Lab Themes

The big outcome today are the lab themes. The themes are set, the description still in draft mode.

(insert drumroll)The Themes(/remove drumroll)

Advocacy Lab
The Advocacy Lab provides an opportunity for you to engage with real world problems in the context of community engagement and social issues. You will work in interdisciplinary teams to investigate problems and issues which matter to communities. The lab is an opportunity to facilitate your engagement with sustainable and responsible practice in the communication and media industries.

Critical and creative thinking will be used to enhance your disciplinary knowledge. This course offers you a deep level of engagement with social problems; you may work with community groups, not-for-profit organizations, or industry on real-world problems.

This is a lab where you are able to use your media and communication abilities to transform your, and others, understanding of ethical questions to empower and make a difference.

Slow Lab
The Slow Lab provides an opportunity for you to undertake speculative research and making around the concept of the ‘slow’. You will work in interdisciplinary teams to define, sketch, elaborate upon, unpack and describe how the recent idea of the ‘slow’ may be relevant to media and communication in terms of theory and practice.

This concept of the slow has arisen in reaction to the increased velocity and intensification of contemporary media, communication, manufacturing and consumption. It is concerned with sustainability and the romantic restoration of the ‘human’ within what some characterise as the ‘in’ or ‘posthuman’ of a contemporary knowledge society. You will interrogate the concept of slowness in this lab.

This is a lab where the slow movement will be appropriated to think about slow media, slow technology, and slow communication. You will use your media and communication abilities to consider the role and relevance of the slow in relation to a problem of your choice.

UnFiction Lab
The UnFiction Lab provides a space to investigate, critique and undertake studies in non fiction theory, practice and form. You will work in interdisciplinary teams to deepen your understanding of key issues in factual, documentary and nonfiction research. These issues may include the relation of fiction to nonfiction, the place of creativity and invention in nonfiction, the ethics of documentary, and asks where nonfiction occurs and why.

Outline of What a Lab Theme Needs to Do

Some guidelines (chime in for what I’ve missed here please)

1. They cannot be discipline specific
2. They do need to be broad enough to offer content/engagement for all current programs (draw a line from creative writing, through comm design, on to all the b.comm programs, and on to games, music, animation, photography…)
3. They need to be relevant to the School
4. We can innovate – lead – agenda set
5. They need to be ‘teachable’ (there needs to be honours appropriate content to be taught)
6. They need to support a diversity of research outcomes (thesis, project, project via portfolio)
7. Hopefully they have some ‘cool’ quality so that students ‘get’ why doing that topic would be, well, cool

Less specific:

1. Let’s think innovative stuff.
2. Let’s think forward looking (honours knowledge as enabling future knowledge practitioners)
3. Let’s think about what honours should be known for and why

Some Possible Lab Themes

These have been sent through by Yoko:

Studio themes for discussion

1. What community?
Description: students explore what notions of a community they belong to, or are associated with through their research

Is it a community of interest or community of practice, or a community of place? I like the idea that students can explore what and how they are connected to eg. through their discipline, through their peers, through their interests, through their geographical locations, etc. Through their individual research, they can explore this connection more deeply and identify elements that make up differences, connection, fragmentation and agency (eg. Latour) within those notions of community, in relation to their topic or project site.

NB: This could also be called ‘what culture?’ too, and explore the same kinda thing.

2. Lost in translation
Description: students explore the things that are hard to make tangible, which can either be within their practice/discipline/project site.

One of the interesting thing about working in an interdisciplinary way is how things becomes ‘lost in translation’ – sometimes, this is an obstacle, and sometimes this can force a level of ambiguity that catalyse a productive and generative activity. Students can investigate facets of tacit knowledge, embedded practices, ambiguous language, complexity and productive tension that arise from operating in the spaces of ‘in-between’.

3. What does it mean to be good?
Description: students explore what it means to be ethical in any chosen field, practice and context. I’ve kinda imagined that this cluster can critically interrogate a variety of pressing issues of our time and include stuff like sustainability, social responsibility, education … etc. It will be good to investigate how ethics manifest in different areas and what values are promoted in the media and communication outputs out there. It could potentially be quite deep but can also be explored as a way to question approaches, conducts and outputs.

USC Annenberg’s innovation lab

California Dreaming – they are doing what we are doing. Only bigger, shinier. USC Annenberg announces a new innovation lab.

New View

NuVu Studio, an “innovation center for young minds” offers exactly the model that the new honours is premised upon. It is a problem based studio where:

The studio model is an apprenticeship model in which the studio environment offers a low-pressure simulated world that approximates the world of practice. In this environment, novice learners undergo a series of graduated problems under the close supervision of a coach. Students confront the small and large contexts within problems as they are exposed to complex, ‘messy’ situations. The Coach offers continual feedback to help students move through their personal problem-solving process. A key component in this learning model is that students are able to understand and explain the learning process as their concept moves forward.

This multidisciplinary studio environment fosters collaboration, communication, creative thinking, problem-solving skills, reflection and presentation. Our goal is for students to explore and learn mindfully in hopes of fostering a more creative generation, better prepared to solve today’s complex problems. (vision)

What is of particular interest is the way in which they run multiple studios during the semester, so rather than a semester on a topic they work much more intensely in smaller chunks. It is intended for 14 to 18 year olds but the principles apply very well to the new honours.

Vertical scholarship

a diagram of research led scholarship

So in the last mtg I had a diagram showing my understanding of the vertical scholarship model.. I’ve attached that sketch to this post with some thoughts based on our discussion:

This is similar to the traditional science model, but it neednt be overly prescriptive with respect to research topic..

The key factor to success (imho) is developing what I’ve labeled ‘ability to translate’ research issues into the lab driven pedagogy we’re discussing.
It’s important to nite that this diagram privileges the research project a lot. It’s drawn with that in mind, and doesn’t represent that the labs are just one part of a larger pedagogical ecosystem